Detailed Figures
by embracing
Summary: He watches her from the forest, hoping one day she will look down at him. But how will she break his heart, and leave him to carry it in his two hands? Whatever happened to fairytale endings


**A/N: **Okay, I have to say that this has been very hard. I have tried forever to write this, and I've finally decided that I'm just going to post it. It's definitely got a mix of tenses, but I've tried hard to sort that out. I've had it here sitting on the shelf for a long time now, so give it a go and hit that little blue button down there to tell me what you think.

**Detailed Figures**

She sits, her fingers desperately working, cutting the fine detailed figure out from the black paper. Her hands are covered with calluses and blisters, but yet still are graceful and beautiful in his eyes. Her fingers work carefully and skilfully. Finally she is done.

She lays a silhouette of a girl onto a crisp white paper. The black stands out. She makes sure that the black is stuck to the white, and moves over to her cupboard. She feels his eyes on her the whole way through. The one that looks on her, from the forest. It is not a disturbing feeling she gets when she feels his gaze, but one of comfort. Although she never looks up, for fear that she has misjudged her feelings, for fear of what might be there.

He is drawn to her. Her beauty that glows from her. Starting at the top of her raven curls, passing her blood red lips and onto her elegant figure. She amazes him to all ends. And one day, he wishes she would look up.

She takes a frame from her cupboard and places the silhouette in tight. This artwork is to be sent to a rich Duke. She has never met him, nor in fact seen him. But he saw her artworks and wanted one himself. A spoilt rich Duke. She did not think he deserved her hard work, but then, she was working class and needed the money. Looking around her room you could see that.

She lives in the house next to the woods. In the light of the morning she would cast her coffee coloured eyes over the forest of pines that he comes from.

But that gaze had always made her feel calmer, feel like everything would be all right. Because, really in the end, it would, wouldn't it?

Then, one day his gaze was no longer upon her. He had disappeared, and her life seemed to slowly fall apart. She felt lost without him, although she refused to believe it. So she tries, as a maiden working her art into the world, and cuts her figures of silhouettes.

She does not feel his gaze again, from that forest, and slowly, very slowly, she loses her glow that was about her. It breaks softly until it is almost not there.

But she keeps one last piece, in case there was that last chance that he might return.

So when she looks over the horizon one day, she has a funny feeling. As though something would happen that day. And if she had stayed for a single moment looking over the horizon, she would have seen the return of someone she missed dearly.

Something else did happened that day, but not what she had hoped. The rich Duke, one that had seen her artworks, demanded to see her.

As soon as he has seen her exotic beauty he insisted to have her hand. And unfortunately, she had to say yes, to escape the life that she now lived in.

But when that single word fell from her mouth, she felt hollow and as though something had broken inside her.

She knew that it was her heart being sliced with a knife. Because the hope had gone, the dream had disappeared, and that final piece of her glow slipped from her grasp. And as much as she tried to fix it, with those skilled, graceful hands, it would not mend.

So then, a night a while after, on the eve of her wedding, she sits by the window, her back facing the forest. A gaze falls on her back, and she immediately tenses. The tears that had been falling suddenly stopped. For the first time, she slowly turns her head to look down upon the forest.

What she sees there makes her cry out. Not for fear, but in pain. As she knows that she has failed herself, and the man.

So the tears fall again and she shakes her head, but her eyes never leave his.

He knows of her engagement, and it pains him so much, because he had once hoped that she would go to him.

She broke her gaze to him, and leapt up screaming.

"Why?" she moaned. Then she started packing. In a frenzy she chucks things into a bag, a frame smashes, but she barely notices. Then there is a knock on her door. She opens it to find him standing there.

"Don't do it." He points to her packed bag.

Everything falls to pieces as soon as he whispered those words. His arms make their way around her and he whispers sweet nothings in her ears.

"I can't let you ruin your life," he whispers before letting her go.

"I can't-" He places a single finger to her lips to stop her.

She squeezes her eyes shut and tears leaked through.

"You have to." With those final words, he takes her hand and squeezes it tight. Then he turns, his heavy heart carried with both hands.

Wait," she whispers. He stops, and turns again. She moves to him and places a soft kiss on his lips. Carefully she draws back from him.

'I'm sorry,' they say in unison. And for one last time, he turns carrying his sorrowful heart with both hands, watching as it shatters as glass.

--------

The next day, as she walked down the aisle, she felt his gaze on her. She looked at him, seeing a bitter expression covering his face. He looked away from her eyes, and then slipped from the room, unable to bare the ceremony any further.

So if she had looked out on the horizon that day, she would see a figure standing with his shattered heart in one hand, and something he had picked up on the other. It was that last piece of her glow. And when he figured out it was there, he knew that he would return one day. So that they could have their fairytale ending.


End file.
